Fake Subpoenas Allegedly from US Distrcit Court in California
I just received this email from the US District Court for the Eastern District of California. Apparently "subpoenas" have been sent to a large number of business executives - but they are fakes. Please do NOT RESPOND to an email about a subpoena without reading this entire letter.
To All Eastern District of California Attorneys,
In recent weeks, thousands of high-ranking executives across the country
received e-mail messages that appear to be official subpoenas from the United States
District Court in San Diego, CA. Each message included the executive's correct name, email
address, company name, and phone number, and commands the recipient to appear
before a grand jury in a civil case. The link embedded in the message purports to offer a
copy of an entire subpoena, but when the recipient tries to view the document, they
unwittingly download and install software that secretly records keystrokes and sends the
data to a remote computer over the Internet. This enables criminals to capture passwords
and other personal or financial information and starts software that allows the computer
to be controlled remotely so the attackers can obtain digital credentials, passwords, and
electronic certificates.
The message directed victims to a Website with a URL that ended with
"uscourts.com" instead of the official site “uscourts.gov.” Misspellings in the fake
subpoena lead investigators to believe that the attackers were not familiar with the U.S.
court system, and might be based in a place that uses a British variant of English.
The AOUSC, FBI, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), S/CA and C/CA have
all posted warnings about the fake messages on their Web-sites after hundreds of phone
calls from individuals and corporations were received about these messages. Other cases
have involved legitimate businesses such as America OnLine, CitiBank, e-Bay and
numerous others. The e-mails often contain logos that closely resemble those of the
legitimate businesses. In this case the seal of the U.S. Courts was included.
